BRATISLAVA, January 28, (WEBNOVINY) – Deputy Chairman of the opposition SMER-SD party Robert Kalinak has the same opinion as President Ivan Gasparovic regarding appointing elected candidate Jozef Centes to the post of prosecutor general, as he said on air of the public-service Slovak Radio (SRo) in a political debate program titled Saturday Dialogues. The head of state said earlier that he has doubts about Centes’s impartiality and thus he is reluctant to appoint him to the post. Kalinak maintains that the president’s position is not at odds with the Constitution, as Centes was not elected in a standard manner. „There were effective/not effective laws, there were new/old [laws], so from that point of view I think that the parliament should return to it and discuss the issue once again in a serious procedure,” Kalinak stated.
According to Chairman of the Parliamentary Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee Radoslav Prochazka (KDH), there are only two lawful reasons for the president to not appoint the elected prosecutor general – if the elected person does not fulfill constitutional and legal preconditions to serve on the post or if the elected candidate was not elected accordingly. As the Constitutional Court confirmed that the parliamentary standing order is not at odds with the Constitution, there is no reason to question the election process. Prochazka does not consider the president’s personal distrust toward Centes to be a relevant reason not to appoint him prosecutor general. Prochazka maintains that the 150-member parliament has the decisive word in the selection of the candidate. “There are no reasons for the president not to appoint Centes to the post,” he said, adding that the president’s lack of trust in Centes is not a legitimate reason to refuse to appoint him.
SITA